LeighaMason

:DHappy after-thanksgiving everyone! Well we spent the night before thanksgiving camping at the deer lease, luckily it was 75 degrees and quite comfortable. I made a venison potato recipe on the campfire and then proceeded to get stuck on it. Then one of the guys on the lease who's wife has a band, spent the next 30 min. following me around and trying to tell me how to get unstuck. Sweet but please just leave me alone when I am in pain. Then when we went to bed I got stung on the hand by a wasp. Maybe I should just stay home next time.... My husbands sister came for thanksgiving. She comes in while I am finishing up the dinner and puts her stuff that she brought on the table and goes to sit in the living room with the kids. So about 30 minutes later, I tell everyone dinner is ready and she comes rushing in the kitchen and says "Oh I need to put the green bean casserole in the oven, it needs to bake for 45 min." and then wants everyone to not eat until its ready. (She hadn't told me she was bringing it so I had already made one because that is a favorite of my oldest stepdaughter.) So Rob tells her, we already have one made and dinner is on the table so lets eat and she gets mad and pouts, if she would have put it in the oven when she got there it would have almost been ready but instead she just dumped it on the table and expected me to find it and cook it for her. Yesterday was also my son's 16th birthday, he always has thanksgiving lunch with his dad and then comes to my house where we have an evening meal (Rob's kids do the same with their mom.) But this year Mason had a football playoff game, it was at 6 in a town that is about an hour away so he had to be at the school at 2. So this was the first year that I didn't get to spend thanksgiving (or his birthday) with my son, a sure sign that he is growing up. But he when I talked to him on the phone he said he wanted me to make another dinner this weekend because he likes what I make every year and wanted us to have a thanksgiving together too. I went to the game and a cold front had come through so it was cold and raining but I got to see my stepson and his wife that were in town from Chicago, it was a close game but they lost. I got home about 10 last night and after the camping trip, cooking dinner, and the football game trip I was exhausted. I am looking forward to a slow day at work today and then having 2 days off. I also forgot to serve the homemade cranberry sauce that I spent the previous Sunday canning. :opps: And after all the crap I ate yesterday I am not about to get on the scales.

When I was first banded I was not losing and I told my husband "But I'm doing everything right" and he told me "um, no your not" so I started weighing and measuring my food and logging it on a web site, I couldn't believe how the calories were adding up.

I think a "diet vacation" can be a great thing. If you had worked you job for 10 months without missing a day you would be tired, well the diet is the same way. And just for the record, since I have been at goal, I now eat anything I want as long as I stay in the correct portion sizes and I stay in a 5 pound range effortlessly. I bet it will be the same for you. I hope your not going to take a blog vacation as well, I read your posts religiously.

Hey Liz! When I first got restriction, I had a lot of gurgling. I read a post once of someone comparing it to a water bottle water dispenser, like in an office? The opening is tight so everything just gurgles through. It calmed down after a while. As long as you can drink and eat solid food, I would wait it out. If you are resorting to mushies for more than a week I would have a small unfill, I never lost any weight on mushie foods.

B: EAS Protein drink S: Greek Yogurt L: Can of tuna, tbs Miracle whip, Sandwich thin D: ??

YAY! Stacie! Bobbie! Glad your back! Shammah, Thinking of you. Melody-- Good choice. Cangel-- Welcome! Tell us about yourself. Crystl-- How are you doing? Anybody seen Betsy? FYI-- Most things in my life suck right now so I am just going to pout and not post much but I am reading and happy for everyone. :blushing:

Will you list your meals for yesterday and today?

I am a hoarder so I have a hard time parting with anything that is still "good", so I am going to share one of my coping mechanisms with you. To get rid of something I have, I have to find someone who I feel needs the item more than I do. For instance, it could be a lady at your church who is getting a divorce and needs a new wordrobe to enter the workforce or our town has a program for the crisis center for abused women who need clothes for work. This helped me give away 100% of my too big clothes.

I am fairly ignorant about diabetes but I had read this study on pubmed.gov about the sleeve vs banding in curing co-morbidities. It said " There was a greater resolution or improvement of DM after LSG (100% vs 46%). DM being "type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM)", I wasn't sure if that is what you had but I thought the info might be helpful. Here is the link to the study. Comparison of comorbidity resolution and improveme... [surg Endosc. 2010] - PubMed result

Good for you! We have to remember we are not cookie cutters! Each one of us is as different as a snowflake and we each need to find our own way out of obesity. I hope this is the answer you are looking for.

Sorry I don't have any advice, but lots of sympathy! Hang in there. ((Hugs))

I did not start losing weight until I started measuring my food and logging it on a web site, there were several things that I was eating that I thought were ok but were actually costing me progress.

The funny thing is not one person has said "You shouldn't have had surgery" now that I am at goal. Imagine that. Since it worked and I am thinner than most people that I know, everyone who had a negative opinion last year has suddenly gotten WLS amnesia!

Melody-- Here is a question to ask the Dr. for me: How the hell can you gain 7 pounds in 1 day if you don't even put 7 pounds of food and water into your body? This should be mathematically impossible. (I'm not doubting you, I just want a scientific answer!) Shammah-- Hugs on the mom thing, my mother is dead set on killing herself with her lifestyle, she has Parkinson's, heart disease, wont take her medication, smokes 2 packs a day and lives on ice cream and diet Dr Pepper. (Not that thats what your mom is doing too) Its just that sometimes it just sucks to have to be the responsible one. Elcee-- I have been complaining on facebook about the cleaning of the rent house. A girl just moved out, she was there only 4 months and you would not believe how the house was when she left. It makes me want to call child protective services because her children have to live in that. Christie-- Are we going to have to get you a keeper? Bar hopping all night? Coming home with no shoes on? Are you having your second childhood? Can I come with you next time?

I have been banded a little over a year and I am at goal. It has been easy for me since I stopped trying to lose. Monday through Friday mornings I get on the scales if they say 130-133 I eat more and I eat "looser", if they say 134-135 I tighten up my eating and I eat like I did when I was losing. Saturday and Sunday I eat whatever appeals to me. (Portion requirements are still in effect but food choices are unlimited.)

I know y'all might think this is crazy but I have been thinking about how my life is different since being banded and one of the things that has changed is I have learned how to be hungry without it being an emergency. Before, if I were out somewhere and I was hungry, I would end up eating a bad choice, now I just suffer until I get to where I can get something good for me. I have spent too much time working on this to screw it up now. I think the diet pills will slow down the learning curve on how to learn to be hungry sometimes. Instead of calling the time after banding "bandster hell" like so many do I called it my "mourning period", its a time to mourn the loss of your disordered eating. And just like when we mourn the loss of a loved one, sometimes we are inexplicably angry or resentful (even if we choose the change) and we can even convince ourselves that we need a crutch, like the diet pills. I know I spend a lot of time when I was first banded fighting my self delusions, I thought I just had portion control issues, I had no idea the extent of my eating disorder and the first step to facing them is being hungry and proving to yourself that you are stronger than the food. OH and BTW, I was banded on 10/20 and didn't get my first fill until 1/4 and only lost 7 pounds during that time so the band was not an "instant success" for me, it was definitely a learning process and once I stopped fighting it, things went much better.

I think I have lactose intolerance now that I am banded. I have lots more stomach noises and I think its from the gas produced by the milk based products. However, dairy is a very important part of my diet so I just ignore the noise.

Dune, go to WWW.PUBMED.GOV for studies on the band, search for adjustable gastric band. The band helps me by making me full after a small amount of food. That is why I needed it, I ate the proper foods before banding but I ate too much because it took a lot of food to trigger the "I'm full" feeling. So now I eat 2-3oz steak, a new potato the size of a golf ball, and maybe 10 green Beans when before I would eat a 16oz steak, a potato the size of my two fists together, a 2 cup salad with dressing, a mound of green beans and a couple of rolls.

I probably ate it slower than I would have before just from habit. (I have to eat normal food very slowly now) but I bet I could have eaten it as fast and in as large of bites as I could get to fit in my mouth. I don't think its possible for me to get stuck on sugar foods. Like the term "Melt in your mouth" I think that foods that are sugar based, especially milk and sugar, start to dissolve in your mouth and are a slippery liquid before they get to the band. If you are looking for help with something physically stopping you from eating these foods, the band is not the answer. Sometimes if I am stressed and the band is super tight at night or if I have had a stuck episode and I am swollen and cant eat but I am hungry, I will eat chips and salsa for dinner. No matter how tight the band is I can always eat junk food.

I can eat anything sugar with no restriction from the band. I haven't tried but I have no doubt that I could eat a 1/2 gallon tub of ice cream with no problems. The same goes for chocolate. I went on a mini vacation with my son last weekend and I ate a whole piece of cheesecake at a restaurant, it was huge, probably 600-700 calories. My band didn't object at all and this was only about 20 min after I had to stop eating my fish because my tummy was full. So the band stopped the fish at a reasonable amount but let me eat the whole cheesecake. I have been reading these boards for over a year and I have never read someone saying "The band physically stops me from over eating ice cream, cake, chocolate, Cookies, etc."

Melody-- Will your insurance let you convert to a sleeve if the pain is from the band?

First I would ask myself "What are her options?" You mentioned the first one, losing weight with diet and exercise. Now ask yourself how many people do you personally know who have lost 100 pounds and kept it off? I don't know one, I have never personally met a person who lost 100 and kept it off. There was a newspaper article recently in my town of a lady who did, but that was so rare they wrote an article in the paper! There are 100,000 people here so is that 1/100,000 odds? Now add in PCOS does it become one in a million? Now for the surgery, I personally know (in real life) 5 people who have had WLS and lost 100% of their excess weight that is out of 7 who have had surgery so the odds are 5/7 for success. (Not very scientific but that is reality for me.) So when I was deciding last year I used these numbers to help me choose. The reality of the situation is this, if she could lose the weight on her own, she already would have. So her choices are stay obese, with an almost 100% guarantee of becoming morbidly obese or super obese by the time she is middle aged or do something about it now. The band may not be the answer, her personal answer might be the sleeve or GB instead, encourage her to find the answer.

Hey Claire, It good to hear from you, size 8 is wonderful, the whole stuffed effect will go away quickly. The great thing about getting close to goal is 4 pounds really makes a big difference in the way your clothes fit, it seems like when we first start we lose 10-20 pounds and we are still wearing the same clothes, but the difference between a too tight 8 and just right is probably only a few pounds. :rolleyes2: I am on the "fighting with my husband diet", its really not that cool. I have been so stressed that my band is really tight and I am having a hard time eating. I'm afraid to weigh tomorrow, I haven't eaten well for several days and I am probably going to be under 130 and I had said I was stopping at 135. Hows that for a complaint? Kind of surreal.

Sinning with a spaghetti squash...I didn't know that was possible. Too bad Bob isn't here he would have a blast with that one. Melody, I am superstitious so I am not going to jinx you but I have a good feeling about you... Well I guess I am on the "fighting with your husband" diet, I have been so stressed I can barely eat. It took an hour to eat a can of tuna with mayo tonight, I am at about 600 calories for the day. The sucky part is that even though I can barely eat I am still hungry but after a few bites I am slimming. :rolleyes2: